Related papers: PRIMA General Observer Science Book Volume 2
Planet population synthesis models predict an abundance of planets with semi-major axes between 1-10 au, yet they lie at the edge of the detection limits of most planet finding techniques. Discovering these planets and studying their…
The Gaia space astrometry mission is measuring accurate distances and space motions of more than two billion stars throughout our Galaxy and beyond. This is a first look at how Gaia is contributing to fundamental physics, and in particular…
SPACE (SPectroscopic All-sky Cosmic Explorer) is a class-M mission proposed to ESA for the Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 call and recently promoted to the next assessment study phase. SPACE will produce the first all-sky spectroscopic survey of…
An international group of scientists has begun planning for the Planet Formation Imager (PFI, www.planetformationimager.org), a next-generation infrared interferometer array with the primary goal of imaging the active phases of planet…
The Simons Observatory (SO) will make precision temperature and polarization measurements of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) over angular scales between 1 arcminute and tens of degrees using over 60,000 detectors and sampling…
The closest ever fly-by of the Martian moon Phobos, performed by the European Space Agency's Mars Express spacecraft, gives a unique opportunity to sharpen and test the Planetary Radio Interferometry and Doppler Experiments (PRIDE)…
Hard X-/soft gamma-ray astronomy is a crucial field for transient, nuclear and multimessenger astrophysics. However, the spatial localization, imaging capabilities and sensitivity of the measurements are strongly limited for the energy…
The Gaia space project, planned for launch in 2011, is one of the ESA cornerstone missions, and will provide astrometric, photometric and spectroscopic data of very high quality for about one billion stars brighter than V=20. This will…
The Prime Focus Spectrograph (PFS) of the Subaru Measurement of Images and Redshifts (SuMIRe) project has been endorsed by Japanese community as one of the main future instruments of the Subaru 8.2-meter telescope at Mauna Kea, Hawaii. This…
The SALTUS Probe mission will provide a powerful far-infrared (far-IR) pointed space observatory to explore our cosmic origins and the possibility of life elsewhere. The observatory employs an innovative deployable 14-m aperture, with a…
We have studied the science rationale, goals and requirements for a mission aimed at using the gravitational lensing from the Sun as a way of achieving high angular resolution and high signal amplification. We find that such a mission…
FLARE (First Light And Reionization Explorer) is a space mission that will be submitted to ESA (M5 call). Its primary goal (about 80% of lifetime) is to identify and study galaxies that dwell in the universe before the end of the…
The Atacama Large mm and sub-mm Array (ALMA) radio observatory is one of the world's largest astronomical projects. After the very successful conclusion of the first observation cycles Early Science Cycles 0 and 1, the ALMA project can…
The e-ASTROGAM is a gamma-ray space mission to be proposed as the M5 Medium-size mission of the European Space Agency. It is dedicated to the observation of the Universe with unprecedented sensitivity in the energy range 0.2 - 100 MeV,…
VITRUV is a second generation spectro-imager for the PRIMA enabled Very Large Telescope Interferometer. By combining simultaneously up to 8 telescopes VITRUV makes the VLTI up to 6 times more efficient. This operational gain allows two…
We describe a computer application designed to analyze hyperspectral data collected by the Compact Infrared Spectrometer for Mars (CRISM). The application links the spectral, imaging and mapping perspectives on the eventual CRISM dataset by…
Accurately determining gas-phase metal-abundances within galaxies is critical as metals strongly affect the physics of the interstellar medium (ISM). To date, the vast majority of widely-used gas-phase abundance-indicators rely on emission…
The EXperiment for Cryogenic Large-Aperture Intensity Mapping (EXCLAIM) is a balloon-borne far-infrared telescope that will survey star formation history over cosmological time scales to improve our understanding of why the star formation…
This article is a sort of sequel of the earlier extensive review by Saha (1999a) where emphasis was laid down on the ground based single aperture, as well as on the working long baseline optical interferometers (LBI) situated at the various…
Quasars are often considered to be point-like objects. This is largely true and allows for an excellent alignment of the optical positional reference frame of the ongoing ESA mission Gaia with the International Celestial Reference Frame.…